


And So We Begin Again

by Scullysknees



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drama & Romance, Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, F/M, Fix-It, Light Angst, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:57:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5137280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scullysknees/pseuds/Scullysknees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment in time.</p><p>A step to the left, the time it takes for wine to spill, for a sparrow to shed a feather. That's how long it takes to tilt The Doctor's world off its axis.</p><p>A blink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A moment in time.

A step to the left, the time it takes for wine to spill, for a sparrow to shed a feather. That's how long it takes to tilt The Doctor's world off its axis.  
A blink.  
It is a Sunday, just one of the thousands he has already seen and passed by in quiet, yet something peculiar has already happened.  
He has landed on foreign ground.  
It is ironic, really, how in all his 900 and odd years, he has never seen Argentina before. He had watched the Earth being born and seen it die over and over again, but never really walked it. Gallifrey, Skaro, Kataa Floko, sure, been there, done that. Latin America, however, in all its promiscuous wonders, is something new entirely.  
So tonight, there he is, standing amidst the dancing crowds. The night is pliant and young but the sun is already setting behind his back. He is warm, so comfortably, wonderfully warm, and that itself is a novelty he can rarely enjoy. To feel the sunbeams licking his skin instead of running from a fire chasing his heels. That kind of quiet heat without a sense of urgency - he has missed it.

He closes his eyes and smiles up into the orange sky. What a marvel.

There is a supple melody thrumming in the night air, Spanish guitars and velvet voices blending together in the smoothest of rhythms. He opens his hearts and listens to every note and every chord - "isn't it good to be here?" they seem to whisper. What sweet music. It pulls his heartstrings ever-so-gently, sends hot shivers up and down his body. He feels himself being slowly seduced by the titillating sounds and he does little to resist. Why should he? His mind is positively purring with pleasure.

And then he blinks.

His eyes open to a flash of red and oh, just like that, in a millisecond, his world goes plummeting - and soaring, all at once - when he sees her.

Like a constellation of stars through a telescope she is. All Audrey, Rita and Grace in her little black dress, ginger curls that catch the sunlight just so, and bare feet gliding effortlessly over the ground beneath her. Little sandstorms swirl at her feet. The men all dance around her and the women stare, some with envy, others with badly hidden lust. She is wildfire, and completely oblivious to her own charm.

He watches her sway, her hair bouncing in curls on and off her shoulders. The hem of her dress hits her knees in time with the rhythm, revealing bits and slivers of marble skin as the fabric swishes around her long legs.  
These are the kind of things that he shouldn't pay any mind to, and the only things that he can think about. Her mouth, slightly open and relaxed into a soft pout, the tongue that moistens her red lip, the muscles of her calves tightening and relaxing in movement. The visible veins in her slender hands, the blood pulsing though them in a lust for life.  
Oh, God. There is no one like her.

He was not prepared to see her tonight, or ever again for that matter, but he keeps his surprise hidden, trusting that no one can see his hearts rioting in his chest. With every beat they pump her name into his blood, sending it flowing through his veins until all of him is infused with a bit of her.

Donna.

But she doesn't - can't - know how his whole body screams her name, so he makes sure that his mouth at least stays silent. For once in his life, he is quiet, but the words racket through his brain nevertheless.

His mind tries reasoning with his spirit. He could just walk away, it says. Find another place to spend the evening, maybe think about her for a while (something about opportunities lost) and return to the TARDIS with enough liquour in his blood to lull him right to sleep. Then next morning, off he will go again, to another planet where memories of Donna Noble will slowly fade into the background.

Oh, fruitless musings. 

He is Earth, lightyears away from her, and Donna is the Sun, burning so brightly, so brilliantly, and the Doctor can but yield to her magnetism. It is inevitable. The universe had put her right there, plopped her living, pulsating body right before his eyes. The odds were... well. Astronomical. This, he feels, can not slip through his fingers. This is once in a million. This is now, and he needs to grab it.

He walzes headfirst into the metaphorical fire and steals her away with a quick "may I?", without waiting for an answer. Donna gasps at the stranger's boldness - this intruder! - mouth agape. Her limbs are rigid, but his arms find a home on her waist.

"Oi! Who do you think you are?" A flashback, coming from what seemed so long ago, gushes like a river through the Doctor's brain. She hasn't changed. But her lips are painted scarlet and he thinks her mouth looks quite good right now, open like that.

"Well, a better dancer than any you'll find in this crowd, for starters," he quips with sly ease. As her stunned eyes fix on his lopsided grin, he slips a determined palm in hers and keeps the other firmly on her waist. Any second now, she will push him away. One, two beats go by.

At the third one she tightens her fingers around his. "Prove it, then."

Somewhere between his lungs and his windpipe, a sigh gets lost. Is this the Donna he knows - knew? Still, in his desperate need to not be alone in her presence, her response - however unexpected - is not unwelcome. "Follow my lead," the Doctor speaks through a smirk.

He listens closely to every beat of the drum, every strum of guitar and every dip in the melody, wishing his feet to do their best. For Donna. No, not really. For himself. For his childlike need to please her and hear her praise in return.

His attention sways between dance steps and her full figure moving so close to him. Her sheer presence is almost too much, and then there is the scent coming off her, and her breath near his heart, her skin on his - so alive -, her fingers holding on tight. The space they are in is vast, sand and rooftops going further than his eyes can see, and all is surrounded by Donna.

How is this happening?

"You are good," she admits in awe, possibly not believing her luck. He can imagine her sauntering off to a new, romantic country in hopes of finding someone to sweep her off her feet. Maybe that is why she is here. Then again, perhaps not, but the thought of being her perfect stranger makes him feel a bit less selfish. If she needs him, even in the smallest of ways, how is he to deny her the pleasure?

"Told you," he says with a cheeky wink.

She smiles at him, a dangerous spark in her crystalline eyes. Familiar, yet new in that is is there just for him.

The hottest of fires burn with a blue flame, he knows, but the warmth he finds in her gaze pulls him in. And if, in the light of her brilliance, his hearts rattle in their cages a bit, who can blame him?

Blame biology, if anything. For he would never be human, of course, but tonight he is, above all, a man, and she is the most important woman in the world - and by heavens, the most beautiful, if such a thing is to be noted. He remembers telling her that looks don't matter. In the general sense, he still agrees with his old self, but he can't deny that now, here in the summer heat, he notices her.

To be quite honest, he is in absolute awe. She moves so effortlessly in his arms, like waves on a shore, stepping back as he steps forward, gripping his shoulder a bit tighter when he pulls her closer. Inhaling when he exhales. A part of him wonders if she even notices their perfect synchronization, if she senses some sort of peculiar connection to this stranger.

If he is half as responsible as he should be, he will let her go with that thought. His mind is in dangerous territory, rebelling against his more sensible parts, almost pleading her to remember, even if it is just a glitch in her unconsciousness, a snippet, just that little something nagging in the back of her mind. He so wants her to feel it, even knowing how it may destroy her. He is well-aware of his many faults and at this point, pretense would be futile.

The ticking clock in his veins tells him that this is the time where the old Donna would have made some sort of comment about his 'flipping lonely god complex' or some such ignominious things. Perhaps she would have brought him back to his senses. By humiliating him, of course, but he would be grateful for anything that stops this selfish train of thought.

He is no hero, he knows. She had been one of the only ones to see it, too, and in recent times the only one who had kept him grounded and still loved him all the same. Or had she – loved him that is - he isn't sure, yet he likes to imagine. She had always, in a sense, thought of her as his equal. Had any human before done that? Had anyone else been so acutely aware of his otherworldliness and still thought of themselves to be on the same level as him? The Doctor thought not. She is special.

"Oi, don't you go drifting off to space! I mean, if you're trying some kind of 'mysterious, broody stranger' thing, then I'm sorry but it isn't working, sunshine." He smirks as she pulls him from his thoughts.

"Nah, I prefer 'enigmatic' and ' woefully charming'." If his smile doesn't quite reach his eyes, Donna doesn't notice. Not this version of her, anyway.

"Ha! I think 'try-hard' would be closer to the truth. So what are you then, spaceman? Some sort of travelling Don Juan? I mean you're obviously not from around here."

The Doctor feels his insides twist and turn when he hears the familiar nickname. Is that just related to his moment of distraction or are the details of her locked memories seeping through? His hearts duel, one thrilled and one terrified where this night would lead him.

Together they form the most exhilarating emotion. Like adrenalin-fueled delight, but so much better.

The remains of his reason sink to the bottom of the sand as his oxfords dance right over it. Donna would have appreciated the change of outfit, he thinks.

"Something like that," he says and slips his fingers into the slots between Donna's own. How perfectly they fit, he muses in the privacy of his mind.

Logic abandoned, he thinks of chemicals. Endorphins, adrenaline, testosterone, all the hormones currently racing through his body, clashing and tangling together in a hot, heavy mess of wants and needs.

He thinks of Donna's hand. Freckles on her wrist, skin soft in the spaces between her fingers.

Her hair, wild. Longer than before, softer - and somewhat impossibly, sleeker.

Her legs. Pale, not even a hint of tan. A bit leaner than before, perhaps. Then again, he only remembers her in jeans and long pajama bottoms. Not like this, bare under the latin sun and swaying in time with his, or thrown over his hip. Wait, no. Not the latter. 'Not yet', an idle part of his mind whispers.

(Adrenaline. Endorphins. Testosterone. Not necessarily in that order.)

He wonders how many more memories of those legs he would have after tonight.

(Testosterone.)

He swallows. When, he wonders, did he allow himself to let these thought come to him freely? At what point had he stopped resisting her pull?  
And again, he reminds himself: this is not the Donna he once knew. This is not the Donna who batted his hands away at the slightest contact and thought of him as but a "long streak of alien nothing". He doesn't know who she is now, and maybe that is good. Maybe, for just these few hours in time, they could be John Smith and Donna Noble. Not The Doctor and his companion, but merely a man and a woman. Chemicals reacting.

Something like a parallel universe where they are just human, nothing more, nothing less.

He thinks of blood, the heat flowing through his pulsing veins.

The night grows darker and she leads him out of the dance floor, away from the crowds. 

He thinks nothing more.


	2. Chapter 2

She had led him to a nearby bench. They sit in silence here, The Doctor with his eyes on Donna and she looking straight ahead. Neither of them can find a single word to say now that the music has died. Now that the melody isn't speaking for them and their hands are no longer touching, they have grown a sort of language barrier between them.

Of course, the Doctor knows so many things he wants to say, but he keeps it all to himself. Strangers, he has to remind himself. As far as Donna knows, that's all they are.

Eventually, he settles for simply stating: "you look cold." Which she does, to be honest. He is still warm in his white dress shirt, but she has no sleeves and the night had already crept in, as it always does, unnoticed.

She looks at him and he wonders how her eyes always seem a bit glossy, even when she is smiling. "It is getting a bit chilly, yeah."

He curses the fact that he has no jacket to lend her. Well, on second thought, she would probably tell him off anyway, good old Donna. She was always a bit difficult to read, a bit... different. He always seemed to do and say the wrong thing where she was concerned, even if it came from a place of caring.

In time, he had learned to understand her language, even the tiniest little nuances. And yet, as always, it came too late. There was a joke in that, somewhere.

"Should we go somewhere else? Somewhere warm, I mean." Did he blunder? Surely she knows where this is heading. But does he, really, or is he just assuming? Or, God forbid, hoping? For a moment, he hates the man he has become. It is the oldest cliché and he always falls for it. And yet again, self-hatred comes too late for him.

None of it matters anyway as she turns her head and smiles at him like she used to, in times past.

In the best of times.

There is a sadness to her, now, but perhaps there always had been, even when she was shiny and new and bouncing with excitement.

"What are you really doing here, really? You never said," she asks then, genuine curiosity in her voice.

The sudden change of topic throws him off for a bit, but he makes something up quickly enough. He is used to that sort of thing.

"Oh, just a holiday. You know, sunshine and all that." He remembers how she loved the sunshine and all the beaches that it shone on. He remembers her bare feet and freshly painted toenails dipping in white sand, her mouth all oohs and aahs as she marvels at the simplest things that, really, she had already seen and done so may times before. Perhaps things weren't so different after all. Then again, her reasons for the trip might have been entirely different, who knows. "You?"

She looks away at that moment, that horrible sadness sweeping over her face yet again, sudden and unwelcome. He hates to think that maybe this is her default state these days. And then, there it is:

"I just want a memory."

If he listens close enough, he can almost hear his own hearts breaking. Empathy, is it, or the ever-present, raw guilt that had built a nest inside him so long ago?

Oh, Donna.

She looks back at him - that brilliant smile now faded from her lips - and pleads with a single stare. Her moon-grey eyes are wet and wide, and oh, how they pull him to her.

He could leave her there, engulfed in her own inexplicable sadness, or he could give her what she wants. Wouldn't the latter be kinder? Flirting with fire maybe, a yellow-black territory, but wouldn't she rather have that?

Wouldn't that be kinder indeed?

He thinks so, thus he protests not when she lays her palm on his cheek and pulls him close. Her mouth is on his - or the other way around, he might have leaned down a bit - and he thinks he might like it if she bit down on his lip. He doesn't know exactly what feral part of his brain the thought came from, but his body quite enjoys the idea. Funny how that works; his mind and body seem like two entirely separate entities, each acting in their own volition without asking the other for permission. Then again, perhaps it had always been there, the desire now flowing free in his veins, maybe the thought had been planted in his head long ago. When he first saw her fresh from the shower. When she had let her hair down in front of him and he had thought of friendly fires. When she, clad all in white, had laughed in abandon at the falling snow. Perhaps it is nothing new at all. Only the sensation, the realness of her tongue sliding into his mouth, hot and pliant, is. Not the want of it.

Alas, she does not bite him. But she nibbles, quite daringly, on his lower lip, and that is more than enough.

He sighs, and it resonates: through his body, a shiver runs, wakes up the last slumbering parts of him. He holds on for dear life. Grips Donna's waist tighter than he probably should, tugs on her hair and sucks her tongue into his mouth.

She moans, blunt fingernails scraping down his neck, and he is so alive.

There is no one like her.

When she lets go, he takes a moment to look into her eyes, maybe he looks for answers or permission. Despite their glossiness, her dilated pupils tell him just what he wants to know.

He buries his nose in her shoulder, inhales the summer in her hair. Lilies, dahlias and white sand. Moringa lower down her neck. Perfume, obviously, but underneath, a sweet warmth that he still recognizes as Donna. Raw, but soft and at this very moment doused with a delicious layer of unguarded arousal.

Absolutely delicious.

\---

In all his years as an explorer of the universe, he has learned not to trust accidents and coincidences. Serendipity is all he knows.

"But you're talking... destiny," Donna had once said, disbelieving.

He is starting to think that she is his, in a way.

He knows that being sent to present-day Argentina, to Donna - on a Sunday no less - was no freak incident. It was kismet. Meeting her always is. Why the universe is repeating itself though, the Doctor doesn't know. Maybe the world needs her again. Maybe she is bound to a martyr's fate.

Or possibly, maybe, it is all about this, he thinks as she leads him to a room - somewhere, he didn't take notice of the surroundings - just this. Another heartbeat, a familiar breath on his skin yet new in it's proximity and heat, the enchanting smell of floral and musk intermingling with his own scent. His personal remedy: a dose of Donna. Whatever sentiment - love or one of it's lesser or more carnal forms - he had harboured for her, finally utilised in some way. Buried for long under layers of fear and denial (but let's not go there), he pours it all onto her now: in kisses and bites that leave her mouth red and wanting for more, in touches that unravel her, in the way he tears at her clothes in his haste to bury himself in her sex. Is the TARDIS really so tuned to his emotions that it can see into his unconscious wants and needs, into the most intimate parts of him? Ah, so he hopes. For once in his long life, he wouldn't mind someone knowing him inside out.

When at long last he has Donna laid out on the crispy clean sheets of the hotel (is it a hotel?) bed, he runs his gaze over her body like he had wanted so long ago. Her stubborn hair that she had probably spent precious time straightening, now curling in the night-time humidity, her kiss-bruised lips, the mounds and slopes of marble skin she reveals exclusively to him, now, as she sits up and lifts her dress at the hem, then removes it completely. She has in her a sort of tactful grace that he hadn't expected her to have: every nerve and joint in her body knows their place and function as she moves, slowly and subtly, in her body that he imagines she knows well by now. When she lifted the hem of her dress with long fingers and her arms didn't tangle in themselves, when she shook her hair after and it fell right back in place. Fluid and supple. When she lifts her gaze to him, now, and aims, that sensual quirk of her lips: a kill shot.

He crawls to her and feels his own poise falling as hers sharpens, he is no match to her. It comes as a blunt shock, his own inadequacy and awkwardness compared to her form. He, a man, is but sharp elbows and wiry limbs, like the strings of a marionette that she, now, controls with her practiced hands.

He feels so young suddenly, like a child playing with matches, and he thinks he would like to bury his head in Donna's lap and cry, but Donna spreads her knees wide and he takes the invitation, pausing for only the second it takes to run his fingers down her inner thigh, and laps her with his tongue.

The gratification is almost instant. Her little sighs grow into moans that resonate and bounce off the walls, tainting their crisp white paint with licks of red-hot pleasure. She becomes a writhing, sweaty mess in less than a minute. Her toes curl, her palms open and close around the sheets and her knees bend farther apart. Still, she is beautiful even as she unravels. A little godly, he thinks, and she is his, for however long it takes to reach that rapidly mounting peak of climax, and he wishes for it to last until dawn, yet at the same time wants to be here for her and show him just how fast and hard he can make her come.

The man in him, the man that he undoubtedly - shamefully - is now, swells with pride with every little blithe moan that rates his adequacy. Little letters fall from Donna's lips, ah-ahh, a little louder now, and the Doctor blushes all the way down to his chest. His ego is well and truly stroked, and he has an uneasy feeling of being a schoolboy praised by his favourite teacher. 

And just then, her thighs still and she grabs his hair with a sweat-slicked hand. "Up," she demands, and what can he do but obey?

He must look like the boy he feels when he wonders what he did wrong, if he has displeased his mistress. He knows this when she chuckles at him from the corner of her mouth. "Well, I'm not going to last much longer if you keep that up."

He thinks that is rather the point, but keeps his mouth tightly lipped.

With a quiver he clambers up her body and notes how she is quickly coming undone: her breasts, still concealed under the lace of her bra, move rapidly up and down with her sharp breaths, and her eyes are heavy under oily lids.

She lifts herself on her elbows and he notes how the flushed flesh of her chest spills over her flimsy underthings. Unsure - and uncaring - of her next move, he leans forward and nips at the skin of one breast. She laughs hoarsely and throws her head back. His innards flip and in a vision of fire, he thinks he might die if he doesn't get to be inside her soon, and maybe tomorrow he'll find the notion utterly silly.

But right now, right now, Donna is under him, hot and wet and pliant and stunningly happy, and he doesn't care how he will feel in the morning.

The Doctor moves closer to her still. He doesn't remove her bra as she has obviously made a conscious decision to keep it on, but he does bring down one cup, just for a while, so he can roll the weight of her breast under his hand and bring a hardened nipple to his mouth. He sucks and nibbles enough to make her sigh long and deep, her eyes closed and mouth slack. She is so open in front of him: her chest in his face, legs splayed to let him close, throat exposed in a long curve. He takes all he can get, kisses her shoulder and sucks at her throat, bathing in the sounds of her unabashed pleasure.

She is growing impatient, her hands reach and tug and clasp where they can, and and the Doctor really feels so much like a boy rather than someone ancient in the world, not he who holds the universe in his hands - right now, she is his universe, and oh, he gets to travel all of her. Tonight.

She lifts herself up and pushes him off her - like a dog he obliges and waits for his prize - look at me, haven't I been so good? - and she settles her weight on his lap. Her bare thighs are soft and her flesh yielding under his fingers as he squeezes a leg straddling him. And her eyes, oh. Oh, he could drown in her, and he holds onto that thought as Donna lowers herself down on his cock and maybe he groans a bit.

She is wet and warm and he trembles in her. She is good. The heat of her around him, the up-and-down wave of her movements, the fingers on his hair and the sweet little sounds she makes with that sinner's mouth.

God, she is good, and he doesn't care if he says it out loud. It isn't a shame to admit. She must know it anyhow, there is a certain hint in the way she smirks at him. He can't take his eyes off her face - pity, really, because when else will he get to see her whole body on display like this? - and it occurs to him that he hasn't looked at her like this, ever. From below, that is. He is taller than her, so naturally, she has always looked up at him, but now he cranes his neck to gaze at her. Oh, if she only knew. How she'd mock him!

In this little universe, however, she only sighs and clenches tight around him. This. The Doctor's bird-bones shake as he edges closer to his orgasm, but ahh, fuck, he wants to last. Never before has he had such a desperate wish to crawl inside someone and stay there until the end of time. She had wanted forever and he would so love to give it to her right now, to stay inside her not just until she comes, but as long as it takes for her body to burn with the last atoms of the Earth. Funny how he sees her death come simultaneously with the apocalypse, or the other way around, despite her obvious mortality and short lifespan. It speaks volumes, surely, that this is how he sees her.

"Ah, I'm..." yes, yes, together now, he thinks as he hears her speak. He feels her name on the tip of his tongue, but he bites his lips to keep them sealed. Strangers, he reminds himself. She clenches around him again and moans, so throaty and loud that the Doctor thinks he might be dreaming. His teeth dig into his lower lip, drawing blood.

Donna.


	3. Chapter 3

He awakes not to the sunlight, but to the gentle sound of raindrops falling on the windowpane. Yet, a golden light still burns his corneas as he opens his eyes. He winces and - eyes tight shut again - takes in a deep breath through his nostrils.

His senses are on fire. His skin is warm, hypersensitive to every little touch, as if the air around him has suddenly become tangible, and the smell that floods his lungs is sharp and sour, almost offensively strong.

The worst, the absolute worst of all, though, is Donna's voice when he hears her speak.

"What is it about me," she begins, an ominous calm in her tone, and the Doctor opens his eyes again, but doesn't dare to face her, "that makes people think it's okay to just use me and then throw me away with yesterday's bins?" Something inside the Doctor breaks. He imagines his innards rotting under his skin and his bones decaying, like someone is pouring acid over them. He holds his breath and tries to keep the mounting terror at bay.

"It's always the same. 'Dumb ol' Donna, she's a bit easy and a bit thick, so why not? Best case scenario, she'll never even know what's been done to her. Another one of those Donna Noble stories where it all went right over her head." The Doctor breathes again, but it's shallow and sharp. It hurts. "They're all like that. The thing is though... I never thought you'd be one of them, Doctor."

And there it is. The pin drops, and he understands the reason for her scorn, for this chastise that he awoke to so harshly, and it's terrible. It hurts everywhere: his head, his chest, even his skin prickles and burns as fear courses through his body like a living thing. He sees gold, tastes the lingering flecks of it, and knows. He had been playing with fire and it had consumed them both, awakening the dormant Time Lord conciousness in the back of Donna's mind. Just as he feared (knew, had even, for a second, foolishly hoped) it would.

This is how it all unfolds: time stops, the universe dissolves into dust and last night plays on his mind in slow-mo. Guilt rushes through him like the blood in his veins - becomes him - then the hurt and all the what nows follow. He loses himself for a while, doesn't want to know how long (but does, 2 long minutes), then rises, slowly, up to sit on the bed. He suddenly feels as if he has too many legs, feels like a stranger in his own skin.

His body feels numb, but everything inside him shakes and rackets. He opens his mouth, doesn't trust his voice or his tongue, but speaks anyhow. "Donna," he begins, her name a like a broken thing on his tongue, that he has borrowed and returned in an unacceptable condition, "you remember?"

What a silly thing to ask, really. So she scoffs, of course, and turns to look at him. Her cheeks are damp and sticky with tears and her eyes are alive with a horribly familiar golden spark. She looks at him with utter disgust, and perhaps, a bit of despair. "What do you think, spaceman?"

The words fall like a curse from her lips. He wishes she would not use the old nickname now when her voice is filled with so much hatred, and it's a really stupid thing to focus on, he knows. Selfish. Perhaps he is hurting more for himself than for her. That is how he knows he is already in too deep, that last night was a mistake. He has fallen into something that he has tried to avoid for so long, was counting on Donna to keep him clear of it.

These entanglements.

This is not the time to consider his own emotions, he quickly decides, and shifts his attention solely to the technical side of things. "How long? Donna, how long have you known? When did you wake up, are you in any pain?" He shuffles around the room, searching for his sonic screwdriver to check for damages.

"Well, let's see. Last night, I was on a lovely holiday and met this odd - yet enigmatic - man, this stranger," she bellows, and he can almost taste the betrayal seething from between her teeth. "He took me to a little cabin and we had, really, quite fantastic sex. The next morning - that is, ten minutes ago now - I woke up with a blinding headache and a new set of memories. And oh yeah, next to the very man who had taken them from me in the first place!"

She turns her head to glare at him with the fury of a thousand suns. How long can he keep pretending to adjust the settings on his screwdriver, he wonders? He twists the top one more time and turns to look at her. Behind a golden screen, her eyes are filled to the brim with anger, perhaps masking a deep hurt, and he so wants to look away. Grit his teeth and keep pretending that none of this is his doing, that it was all one big accident, just a little unavoidable slip. Impossible, he knows. He could have so easily avoided this, could have done the right thing and left as soon as he had seen her. 900-and-odd years had taught him nothing, it seems as he points the sonic device to her face, trying to undo the disasters he has unfolded.

To his surprise - why, he should have seen it coming, of course - she slaps it away, sending the device clattering on the floor. "Don't you dare. You're not touching me, and don't even think about wiping my mind again!" Her words became more hurried the longer she spoke, and her eyes became wilder. Something is shaking her, and he knows then, that she is, above all else, scared. She reminds him of a wild animal, caged and raging against her restraints. The trust she had once held for him has broken, snapped like a piece of string, and she is left floating in stormy waters. He hurts for her, oh, so much, but pity will not help her if her mind is to consume her whole.

"I won't, Donna, I- I wouldn't." She gives him a look and he backtracks. "Not again." His cheeks colour with shame. "Just let me examine you. You might be dying, Donna, we need to know what's happening." Even speaking her name now feels like betrayal. He feels like a thief, stealing what isn't his: her memories, the sighs and moans he drew from her last night, and now, her name in his mouth. None of them had been his to take, to use, and yet he had, unabashedly, took them all.

He feels as though another version of himself - from the past or the future, either way - is scowling at him from somewhere above, looking at him with utter disgust, dismay. When did we become like this? He wants to blame her for this, wants to put this all on her: her long legs and wandering hands, but he knows she would not have invited him into her bed had her mind been intact, as it is now.

Everything inside him breaks.

"No." They way she says it, sharp and sure, leaves no room for argument. He wants to, oh of course he does, but what could he say? Really, now, she knows the risks, and still wants the Doctor's hands as far away from her as possible. What a rejection, that she would rather perish than be mended by his hand.

"Donna, you could die!" His anger masks a hurt that he is probably not entitled to feel.

"Yes, I know!" She hisses. "But how is that different than losing a big chunk of my life? This whole year... I've had no idea who I was. It all seemed to make sense, like my brain was somehow slotting things together to make a logical timeline, but still, it was like... like I hadn't existed, for a while." She is losing herself. Her eyes are unfocused, she is not here. Is it the Time Lord consiousness drowning her, or the overwhelming epiphany of this is why everything had been so wrong, all this time?

The Doctor has nothing to say or do. Not a word that would make any of this okay and no action that she would allow him to take. What he wouldn't do for the right to take her into his arms, right now, to slip her into his lap where she fits so neatly, and let her bleed her sorrow unto him?

Alas, she stands up, covering herself with the blanket, and retrieves her dress from the floor. She positively stomps to the bathroom to slip the clothing back on, and comes back with a defiant stare, as if she holds all the answers in the universe and no one should dare to question them.

"I'm going home, and don't you dare try to follow me." Why didn't she just punch him in the stomach and go? Somehow, the words hurt more in this instance. How cold her voice was, how calloused and void of emotion. How unlike her, the fireball that she was.

"Donna..." he wailed - stay, no, come here now - but ah, how stupid. She had made up her mind, however frail the string of her thoughts were right now.

"Don't - this is my choice to make."

And just like that, she walks out the door and slips through his fingers. He has the sinking feeling that just now, she took his happiness - or what was left of it - with her.


	4. Chapter 4

These are the last days of summer. It's August, the sun is blazing down on England with relentless heat. You can see the heatwaves rippling in the air. Thick. Suffocating. They latch onto your skin, crawl between your fingers, and the water drips right off your body. 

Just this day and two more. Then it will end. Autumn will bring rain and the parched soil of this land will be drunk with it.

Donna knows. Time beats inside her like a second heart as she waits for rain under the London sky. Never before has she complained about sunny days, but this is too much. There is no air, it feels to her, as she stands bathing in the last sunbeams of the day. Just crippling heat.

How long has it been now? A month and a half. Only six weeks since she returned to London, and still she knows what she knew then. Even the blazing sun hasn't burned her memories, although everything else in her seems to be melting away.

But time, the acute sense of seconds passing by and turning into hours, remains sharp within the stream of her thoughts. She will always remember the exact date, hour and minute that she came back to herself. When the memories blinded her - just for four seconds - and she was somewhat whole again, though cracked and bruised. Like a glass that someone had poorly glued together. Any minute now, she had thought, she would break. Shatter. A crash and a whimper, and she would be gone again - flushed out of her own head - and wake up to familiar nothingness.

She should not be here anymore. And yet.

She watches as people move like elephants before her eyes: slow and heavy with exhaustion. Their feet drag and their hair sticks to their sweaty foreheads. Melting with the heat. Oh, the stench of it. Of dry asphalt and dehydrated bodies.

Just two more days.

She turns her eyes to the house across the road. White walls, three floors, a garden. Home - or no, not quite. Not anymore. How would she describe it? A place to sleep? She drags her body back inside anyhow and counts the seconds to nightfall.

And she waits.

\---

Summer turns into autumn. September passes quickly, October a little slower. Halloween goes by unmarked in the Noble household. November comes in without knocking.

Days melt away and nothing changes, yet everything is different inside Donna's loud mind. She has lasted. Survived would not be entirely correct, no. Endured, even less so. She has simply lasted, as what she is now, what she became in the summer.

But her thoughts. They ripple and change even as her life remains at a standstill. Would he come if she called, this time? Would she even want to go with him? The answer, sharp as a needlepoint, comes to her with an uneasy sense of disappointment: no, she would not. He had taken from her what was never his to touch upon. And yet... and yet. Something lingers.

Ah, time. Funny how it changes things. How it takes your memories and sweetens them, dips them into gold and rounds their rough edges. Time, it tick-tocks away like that and remembrance grows more and more important. Then, the mind has a tendency to fill in those little gaps that you've forgotten - the details - and perhaps the resulting view is even better than the original. A bit brighter, more saturated.

That cold November night, as Donna lies in her bed, nestled in the clockwork puzzle of her thoughts, she hears a familiar mechanical wheeze outside her window. Her heart jumps hard enough to draw a gasp from her lips.

He is here. Just around the corner. Now. Suddenly, and then again expectedly.

This is when she weighs her options. She could always run. She is home, in the safety of her own bedroom, she could lock herself in and carry on lasting.

But.

She leaps off her bed where her husband - poor thing - continues to sleep in oblivion. She moves in silence, puts on her coat and steps out the door. Alone now, she walks a little faster, towards the light around the corner where he awaits.

She sees him, standing in the doorway of his odd spaceship, dressed in a familiar pinstripe suit that she still hates. He doesn't smile or open his arms in a hug. She doesn't expect - or want - him to.

Nevertheless, he is beautiful, and she is tired and cold as she wipes clear snot from the tip of her nose, and maybe there is something to be saved here.

It wasn't all bad, she tells herself to silence the alarm bells going off in her mind.

Ah. This is how time mends wounds and sews people together. It meddles with the past and paints a lovely picture for the present. Maybe it wasn't all that bad.

This is why there is hope, still, for Donna and the Doctor as they stand before each other now, after five long months. The warm lap of July has long since given way to autumn rains, and the TARDIS' orange glow looks wonderfully inviting now when the November wind nips Donna's toes.

The freedom of an open road. Anywhere, anywhen. The past, the present and the future, all in her grasp, only a breath away. How it had attracted her once, the pull of the universe. At a time in her journey when her lust for life had been at its strongest, the Doctor had come to her and offered her the world on a silver platter. And she had taken his hand, feeling his clockwork pulse ticking under his skin.

Now it beats in her own heart, and her head, and she thinks she might know where she belongs, despite the fact that it hurts in the strangest places. It is an epiphany, but not the kind that comes with a breath of relief. It is complete and utter resignation. Bowing to the inevitable, feet shackled and hands tied.

"You... you've decided to stay, then?" His voice carries over the howling wind. There is desperation in his eyes and a quiver in his lip.

"Yeah." He does smile, now - a little - but she cannot. She sniffs and brushes past him, into the welcoming embrace of the TARDIS, and shivers a little.

What is it, this strange pull she feels to the ship's core? She licks rainwater from her lips and tries to ignore it. "First things first: is my room still in place? 'Cause I'm dying for a hot bath."  
The wooden door behind her closes and the world disappears from her view.

So it begins again.


End file.
